Center Moves From Santa Fe To Denver

The National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center (SRC) has moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Intermountain Regional Office in Denver, Colorado.

The SRC was established in 1980 as the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU) to inventory and evaluate submerged resources in the National Park system and to assist other agencies, nationally and internationally, with underwater heritage resource issues. The mission of SRC is to provide direct support to superintendents and partners responsible for stewardship of submerged resources, and to enhance and facilitate public appreciation, access, understanding and preservation of those resources.  For more than 30 years the team has been a leader in documentation and interpretation of submerged resources multidisciplinary approaches to submerged cultural resources and operational/scientific diving for the federal government.

Along with the move to the regional office in Denver after nearly 30 years in Santa Fe, the center has gone through another change. SRC chief Larry Murphy retired in January; the acting chief is Dr. Dave Conlin.

The SRC is excited to be embarking on a new phase of preservation and protection of submerged resources from its new location, with old and new partners.  The move to Denver will allow for greater integration with other national programs, such as the Water Resources Division, the Environmental Quality Division and the Ocean and Coastal Resources Branch, as well as facilitate the establishment of new working relationships beneficial to the mission of the National Park Service.

The center is known across the service for a variety of projects, including the documentation and preservation of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, work on the sunken B-29 Superfortress aircraft in Lake Mead, the documentation of the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic sunk in 1864 off Charleston South Carolina, and assistance with recovery of the Confederate submarine that sank Housatonic, the H.L. Hunley, in August 2000.

The SRC is currently conducting operations in six of the seven regions in the National Park Service. This summer, SRC archeologists will be conducting submerged site condition assessments at Biscayne National Park, Dry Tortugas National Park, and Isle Royale National Park.  In addition, the SRC is finishing a multi-year inventory and assessment of submerged and emergent sites at Lake Mead National Recreation Area.  Meanwhile, the SRC continues to provide support to parks for operational diving, dive training and the management of a variety of submerged resources.

For those located in or near the Denver area, the SRC will be having an open house at the Alameda building on Tuesday June 16th, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information about the SRC, contact Dave Conlin, Acting Chief at Dave_Conlin@NPS.gov